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Sunday, April 26, 2009

Apparently, "swine flu" is the big subject on my Twitter feed. According to the CDC (or what The Man wants you to know):

Swine Influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza that regularly cause outbreaks of influenza among pigs. Swine flu viruses do not normally infect humans, however, human infections with swine flu do occur, and cases of human-to-human spread of swine flu viruses has been documented. See General Information about Swine Flu.

That's what you get for hanging out with the pigs from Animal Farm. You get swine flu.

Speaking of animals (I tweeted this before): Why are condors the "good guys," but vultures the "bad guys"? They're, like, the same kind of scavenging bird - sometimes the same bird. The California Condor is heroic because the species is recovering from the brink of extinction. The California Vulture is the same animal, but it sounds like a buzzard you wouldn't want to meet if your car breaks down in Death Valley.

Furthermore, why are sheep the "good guys," but goats a symbol of "evil"? Is it the horns? Male sheep - rams - tend to have the cool, rounded horns, while goats apparently have the horns (and beard) of Satan.

In any case, the sheep/goat dichotomy is a lose-lose situation: Who wants to be sheeple? Who wants to be a scapegoat? Who wants to be a black sheep? For that matter, which is worse: To be a black sheep within the sheep population, or a a scapegoat exiled from the sheep? Do the sheep and goats actually care about this, or is this the doing of the herder(s)?